Posts Tagged ‘macs’
September 9, 2009
More often than I care to recall, I have impulsively downloaded a fancy new iPhone application, only to have it languish on my phone. That was the inspiration for the first “list of iPhone apps I actually use” last year, after the iTunes store started selling third-party applications.
Since then, the number of new applications has grown rapidly. Now there’s a cottage industry of lists, blogs and podcasts devoted to reviewing applications. Here’s a recent Techcrunch list of the “best” apps, which notes the store had 300 new apps rolling out every day. Here’s a similar post at Gizmodo, which put the total number of apps at more than 74,000. Many of the lists that try to sort out the best applications seem to focus more on flash than substance.
In August, I finally renewed my AT&T contract and upgraded to the iPhone 3GS. It seemed like the right time to reconsider the programs I had loaded onto my phone. Did I actually use them?
Here’s my revised list:
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Posted in Blogging, Moving Images, New York, Social Media, iPhone Apps | 8 Comments »
Tags: 1Password, AIM, Amazon, AOL Radio, Bento, Books, computers, dictionaries, Facebook, games, Gizmodo, Google, iPhone Apps, iPhones, iPods, iTunes, Kindle, Last.FM, macs, Midomi, music, newspapers, NPR, NYC, NYT, O.E.D., Pandora, Posterous, radio, Readdle, remotes, Shakespeare, Shazam, SMS, software, Stanza, Techcrunch, technology, texting, Tweetie, Twitter, Twitterfon, UpNext, Urbanspoon, Wall Street Journal, webcams, WikiHow, Wikipanion, Wikipedia, Yelp
January 19, 2009
Welcome to the Podcast Zeitgeist list: presented in apparently random order, at inconsistent intervals, its purpose obscure, its usefulness in doubt, its taste questionable, its methods and motives suspect. [See all lists.]
This Week in Tech 177: There’s a Little Shatner in All of Us and 178: Call of Doody. I’m catching up here with two episodes. A special guest on the first of these was Star Trek’s Geordi LaForge (Levar Burton). Burton held his own as a geek on a panel with Leo Laporte, John C. Dvorak, Ryan Block, and Lisa Bettany. A lot of talk about TVs. (Block: “Plasma TVs are on the way out.”) Reviews of the “disappointing” MacWorld Expo and the Consumer Electronics Show. Whether the Palm Pre phone can save Palm (Dvorak: “They’re done.”) They end with the prospects for another Star Trek movie and a discussion of Geordi’s visor. The latest episode, recorded Sunday night, devotes 20 minutes to the news that Steve Jobs is taking a temporary leave from Apple for health reasons, with a focus on news coverage, from Ron Goldman of CNBC to this profanity-laden Gizmodo post. Dvorak predicts that Apple will go into decline in two years. This is followed bya discussion of the Downadup/Conficker worm that infected 9 million Windows computers in four days (download the security updates, people). Laporte is wiggy on this episode (“Conficker? I hardly knew her!”), perhaps because he and panelist Tom Merritt attended a concert the night before by the geek troubadour Jonathan Coulton and the improv duo Paul & Storm. (The “doody” in the podcast title refers to panelist Patrick Norton, who has to change his son’s diaper during the show and never returns.) The liquidation of Circuit City. A discussion of digital TV up-converters (Dvorak recommends a model.) Laporte recommends an audiobook: “Predictably Irrational.” United Kingdom porn filters are blocking Wikipedia and the Wayback Machine. Are Are Google layoffs and the killing of <a href="“>features like Jaiku and Dodgeball a sign of a market bottom? The episode ends with a clip of Coulton’s “Mandelbrot Set.” Running times: Both 1 hour 20 minutes, give or take a minute. Released: Jan. 11 and 18.
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Posted in Podcast Zeitgeist | 6 Comments »
Tags: 40-Year-Old Boy, Alex Lindsay, Andy Ihnatko, Apple, Blogs, Christian Comedy Podcast, computers, Dinner Party Download, Facebook, Futile Podcast, Geek Loves Nerd, iPhone Apps, iPhones, iPods, Jonathan Larroquette, Lamont Mozier, Leo Laporte, MacBreak, macs, MacWorld, Mike Schmidt, movies, netbooks, Podcast Zeitgeist, podcasts, Seth Romatelli, technology, This Week in Tech, Twitter, Uhh Yeah Dude, Weekly
January 1, 2009
There has been a lot of chatter about the podcasting business model, and whether it has been a failure. That talk intensified when a major commercial podcaster, Podango, warned recently that its death seemed to be near. None of this is of concern to me: I leave business models to the money people. My interest is content.
I had more free time than usual this week, so the list is longer than usual (in the order I listened). [See all lists.]
Grammar Girl 149: Top Five Pet Peeves of 2008 Grammar Girl (Mignon Fogarty) has a business model, or, at least, some regular advertisers and a dedicated audience of grammar enforcers. The top peeves suggested by her listeners: carelessness with language, misuse of “myself,” overuse of the word “tapped,” the phrase “baby bump,” and the use of “slay” as a noun, particularly in New York Daily News headlines. It’s an idiosyncratic list, to be sure, but all these targets are worthy of scorn. (I also listened to the slightly less interesting Episode 150, about podcasting a book. I doubt I would ever listen to a book in serialized podcast form.) Length: 8:33 minutes. Released: Dec. 19.
Make-It-Green Girl 34: The Story of Stuff A sister podcast to the one from Grammar Girl, with the same “quick and dirty” preaching to the converted. Anna Elzeftaway suggests you stop buying so much stuff and suggests holiday gifts that require no products, packaging or other waste. “Make it special without making a footprint.” The smug message grates a bit. Length: 5:06 minutes. Released: Dec. 24.
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Tags: 2012 Mayan Prophecy, ads, advertising, Alex Lindsay, Andy Ihnatko, Apple, Barista Exchange, Buddhism, business models, cellphones, Christianity, coffee podcasts, Coffee!, Coffeegeek, Doc Ellis, espresso, Futile Podcast, grammar, Grammar Girl, hip-hop, iFart Mobile, iPhone Apps, iPhones, Jonathan Larroquette, Jorianne the Coffee Psychic, Jun Po, Leo Laporte, Lethal Weapon, MacBreak Weekly, macs, Make-It-Green Girl, Mel Gibson, movies, Oprah, PETA, Podcast Zeitgeist, podcasting, podcasts, psychics, Rinzai Zen, seatbelts, Seth Romatelli, This Week in Tech, Twit.tv, Uhh Yeah Dude, Wall-E, WFMU
November 28, 2008
Here’s my weekly roundup of podcasts from selected geeks, nerds, kooks, freaks, comedians, self-styled tech gurus and other denizens of the audio Web, in the order I listened this week:
- “Extra Life Radio, #202, #203, and #204” “Geek tested, nerd approved!” A likable group of geeks and nerds, Scott Johnson and his friends are Web comics artists who talk about films, TV, gaming and comics, among other topics of a certain type. The first episode (“Vacillating Two Oh Two”) encapsulated what I value in a podcast — a deep and serious discussion that makes me care about a niche interest, in this case, Web comics. The next episode (#203 “Spinimal!”) was a wide-ranging discussion of movies. The Thanksgiving episode (#204, “Choot the Turkey”) was the least compelling, more movie talk and a long, easily skipped conversation about soccer parents (they often take a good 15 to 20 minutes to warm up). This podcast was the winner in the general category of the mostly meaningless 2008 Podcast Awards, sponsored by the marketing company Podcast Connect Inc. The contest bases the awards on how many fans repeatedly click on an unscientific online survey, as Mr. Johnson, to his credit, notes. He and his co-hosts also won for a “World of Warcraft” gaming podcast, The Instance. Length: Ranging from 1 hour, 7 minutes to 1 hour, 32 minutes. Released: Nov. 12, Nov. 17 and Nov. 25.
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Tags: Alex Albrecht, Andy Ihnatko, Brian Stelter, brocabulary, Daisy Whitney, Diggnation, Extra Life Radio, I Want Sandy, iPhone Apps, iTunes, Jonathan Larroquette, Leo Laporte, MacBreak Weekly, macs, misogynists, movies, Podcast Awards, Podcast Zeitgeist, Seth Romatelli, Stikkit, The Bugle, This Week in Media, This Week in Tech, Uhh Yeah Dude, Uli's Talking Moose, Vomitus Prime, Web comics, You Look Nice Today
November 22, 2008
{Update! New List! New Post! See the new list of iPhone applications I actually still use in this post, from September 2009.]
For 99 cents I downloaded Ocarina, an app from Smule that turns an iPhone into a version of that ancient flute-like instrument. You press glowing “finger holes” on the touchscreen and blow into the microphone to play [Video].
That’s fun, but Ocarina does more than that. The app also uses the location software and a Google-Earth style globe to let you rotate the earth and listen to others play on their phones around the world. As they play one by one, visual images of the notes stream upward, as you watch from space. Around the globe, patches of glowing white show what are apparently concentrations of signals, particularly on the coasts of the United States and in Europe. One soloist sent a lonely tune up from an island of Hawaii.
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Posted in iPhone Apps | 2 Comments »
Tags: Apple, computers, GPS, iphone, iPhone Apps, iPods, macs, music, musicians, Ocarina, Smart Playlists, Smule, software, technology
November 13, 2008
What I got out of this week’s podcasts for nerds and geeks:
“TWIT 168: Dirty Pedro” This week’s episode proved useful for getting to sleep on Tuesday evening. Otherwise, I might be asking, how do I get this 1:34 hours of my life back? The signal to noise ratio is quite low, despite heroic efforts by John C. Dvorak to keep the discussion focused on technology. The Audible.com ad was mercifully short. Topics: Google/Yahoo, Obama’s technology and FCC policy, cameras, keyboards, an argument for aggressive comment moderation on blogs. Released: Nov. 9. Length: 1 hour, 34 minutes
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Posted in Podcast Zeitgeist | 2 Comments »
Tags: iPhone Apps, Podcast Zeitgeist, Apple, macs, Uhh Yeah Dude, You Look Nice Today, Leo Laporte, Merlin Mann, Twit.tv, MacBreak Weekly, This Week in Tech, iPods, Seth Romatelli, Jonathan Larroquette, John Hodgman, nerds, geeks, John Gruber, Andy Ihnatko, Maccast, Adam Christianson, Totally Rad Show, Five Tacos and a Taco, Found magazine, Dan Savage, Jesse Thorn, Sound of Young America, Jonathan Coulton
November 10, 2008
I read blogs for my job. I used to read them for fun. There was a certain satisfaction circa 2002 in answering the question, “where did you hear that?” with the name of a blog the other person had never heard of, which by now is a blog that person is sick of reading. Of course, now dogs have blogs. Dogs. Have blogs. This is deplorable. One good thing about the old Internet was that we didn’t know they were dogs. And we thought they were fascinating.
Good blogs have a few things in common. They are the often the product of an obsession, or a collection of obsessions. They are reported. And, yes — well-curated links count as reporting. Good blogs are surprising. They are fresh. They break news. They are visually interesting. They make us laugh. They make us email our friends. They are sometimes deep. They update frequently. In other words, they are nothing like the lame personal blog you are reading.
The true test is whether you return. Here are 10 blogs that get my repeat business. That means their feeds are in my top folder in Google Reader, and I scroll through the headlines every day, even if I don’t read every post. They are not, generally, mean-spirited or political or full of opinion.
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Posted in Blogging | 1 Comment »
Tags: Apple, Blogos, Blogs, cycling, Google Reader, Jason Kottke, John C. Dvorak, Kevin Kelly, macs, Matt Haughey, NYC, Tools, wtf
More often than I care to recall, I have impulsively downloaded a fancy new iPhone application, only to have it languish on my phone. That was the inspiration for the first “list of iPhone apps I actually use” last year, after the iTunes store started selling third-party applications.
